


The Color of Love

by cthchewy (pyrrhic_victoly)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: ...becomes a megachurch, Alternate Universe, Crack Treated Seriously, Cult of the Signless Sufferer, Drag Queens, Everyone is a gay disaster, F/F, F/M, Gay Pride, Gen, Gender Issues, Genderfluid Character, Happy Ending, Hermaphroditic Trolls (Homestuck), M/M, Pride Parades, Probably Both, Psii is also a bit unhinged, RAINBOWS EVERYWHERE!!!, Signless is a little bit unhinged, Suicide Attempt, Trolls on Earth, Unreliable Narrator, helmsman angst, or serious issues treated crackily?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-03-06 08:04:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18846961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrhic_victoly/pseuds/cthchewy
Summary: How Signless woke up (alive), settled in a quiet neighborhood on an alien planet, and started attending all the pride parades.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I once put in a prompt on the kink meme about Signless going to all the pride parades to enjoy the rainbows and unity without understanding what the humans are actually marching for. I don’t think it was ever filled? Years later… I did it myself. (And I really thought I would max out at 2k words, like oh let's just drabble this and then work on something else, but yeah that didn't happen.)
> 
> Some character/relationship stuff is borrowed from the epilogues, but mostly this is just very, very AU.

The chair is all hard inorganic angles except for the cushion, which feels too delicate under his claws, as if it might rip if he squeezes just a little harder. Clench, release. Clench, release. He tests the give of the strange too-soft material, feeling a part of him drift away from the two wide-eyed youngsters sitting across the table.

“You’ll be safe here, Signless, sir,” says the first. “This is a certified troll-friendly building!” Burgundy, ram horns, too-bright smile. The tag clipped to her blouse says MEGIDO, ARADIA and underneath it, Alternian Community Outreach Center – Integration Case Manager.

Signless nods listlessly in her general direction. It’s hard to bring himself to make eye contact with such a hopeful gaze. It’s hard, also, to understand everything through her accent. Common Alternian has changed too much in the time he’s been asleep. He idly wonders if his own speech, to the youngsters, now sounds like an ancient highblood’s.

“The, uh, center is just down the road, um, if you need us for anything...” says the second. Brown, bull horns, too-sweet smile. There’s no tag on his chest, though Signless recognizes him as the Alternian Wildlife Rehabilitation something-or-other, the sole member of his department, currently on loan to Integration because the Alternian Community Outreach Center of this district has maybe a claw’s worth of full-time staff and neither humans nor trolls are dumb enough to smuggle giant shadowolves into Earth-dog fighting rings on the regular. Just yesterday he was a substitute lifeguard at the shallow end of the community pool.

The two social workers – that concept would be something marvelous if Signless weren’t so numb after screaming himself hoarse for the last however-long, quarter sweep, maybe – place a stack of bilingual brochures in front of him alongside an English phrasebook and a hand-drawn map to the nearest grocery store. They promise to check in regularly.

Then he’s alone.

Signless glances at his surroundings. Everything is foreign here, just different enough to be uncanny, to put him on edge. Each wall and each piece of furniture is a subtle reminder that he is literally worlds away from home, displaced in time and space. He should be dead.

He doesn’t want to die, but it feels wrong to be alive. How can he go about living when everything he has ever known is gone? What is he supposed to do with his time now, when he has suddenly gone from being tortured to waking up in an era where peace reigns and there is nothing left to fight for. 

It was still bright out when the social workers left. Now the sun has barely set. He’s lost more time, hours maybe, adrift in the fuzzy blankness of his own mind. It’s early, but he sleeps.

Without sopor, he dreams. He relives his death and resurrection. A flash, the Condesce’s gloating face, then nothing. A flash, cold, voices muffled through a thick layer of glass, shouting, darkness again. Pain, warmth, chaos. The nauseating push and pull of wormhole gravity. Breaths of stale air, recycled over and over again. Sips of stale water, purified from waste over and over again.

Day and night cycles blur into infinity until the sun becomes mild, and too-bright-too-sweet smiles surround him.

“You’ve lost a lot of time.”

“Your people and teachings have persevered.”

“We’re all your allies.”

“Welcome to Earth.”

Signless wakes up feeling a bit hopeful. Though muted, it’s the first emotion he’s had besides confusion and sorrow for a very long time. The past however-long has been a blur of cryo pods and alien machinery. They tried to get through to him at the center, but there was still too much going on that he’d had no time to process.

Now it’s quiet but for the chirping of alien birds. He thinks he’ll brave the grocery store first.

 

* * *

 

The first time Jade sees the new troll neighbor, he’s clutching an Alternian-English phrasebook in one hand, and has a little map of the block in the other. His eyes are wide as he stares at the squash display.

She takes a lot of pride in that squash display! While it isn’t as epic as the one in autumn, the summer squashes are arranged as beautifully as she could manage. Packages of delicate squash blossoms are tucked artfully around the mound of straightnecks, crooknecks, pattypans and zucchini. At the base are giant young loofahs – once considered exotic, now common due to the increasing number of Asian families in the area.

“S-skaatch… skuuatsh… skuuaash…”

The troll blinks several times, then proceeds to carefully place one of each type of squash into his basket, giant loofah included.

Jade pauses in her work – touching up the Weekly Specials chalkboard – to consider offering her assistance. It’s rare to see a troll immigrant so fresh off the boat and all alone. They usually move about in clades when settling into new environments, or so Jade’s few troll acquaintances had told her. This troll, however, seems very satisfied with his squash haul, so Jade returns to her duties.

 

* * *

 

Squash is a magnificent food!

It looks and tastes like grubs, but grows on vines! Signless wasn’t able to make out much on the human internet, but at least he could do image searches. Earth was truly fascinating to have such an abundance of non-poisonous plants.

The numbness is slowly fading as he settles into a routine. Signless begins to itch for a new purpose. He has mastered the grocery store and the laundromat. His case worker drops by every week with a small envelope of cash. (“No, no, it’s not from us! It’s from the Alternian government’s reparations fund for the torture and genocide of your people! Our people? Anyway, your bank card should come in the mail soon!”) He can understand numbers and basic greeting gestures, and has even started going for walks around the park.

Living in the moment can be nice, but something in him, buried dark and deep, is saying that he’ll never shake the numbness completely if he doesn’t find a cause. It’s just not _him_ to be aimless.

...or so he thinks as he wanders aimlessly around the park. Strangely enough, the park regulars don’t seem to be around today. By the time Signless thinks to ask, there are no friendly faces around to ask – not the dog-walker or the pigeon-feeder or the skateboarding pupae. No one who has tried to speak with him before is here.

Instead, there are a few scattered strangers setting up camp chairs and sneaking curious glances in his direction. Signless doesn’t know if he’s up for more alien interaction stress, so he avoids catching their eyes. The anxiety turns into cold, and the numbness begins to creep back into his mind. It’s a shame, as today had been the day he planned on asking to join the elderly pigeon-feeder.

People have started streaming into the area as he stood frozen. They begin to set up stalls and tents and tables. There is suddenly so much happening that Signless doesn’t know where to look.

He must appear lost, because a young human woman approaches, speaking with concern in her voice. Signless awkwardly raises a palm, unsure if he’s doing so to greet her or stop her approach. She’s wearing a blue shirt with a yellow sign on it – do humans have signs? Whether they do or don’t, this one can’t function like a troll sign since too many of the humans milling around setting up tables are wearing the same yellow sign of two short parallel lines, like Libra with the top line evened out. He can’t understand her or them at all, and just… blinks.

Between one blink and the next, she presses two glossy squares into the palm he had still been holding up. She backs away slowly at first, still shooting him a shaky smile. Then she trots back to the tents, and Signless blink-blink-slowly glances down at his new possessions. One has the same blue and yellow sign. The other underneath it… is a rainbow.

Signless feels his eyes widen. It’s the most beautiful sign he’s ever seen. But there’s no time to think too deeply on the why and the how of it because in the next moment, a parade comes barreling through.

 

* * *

 

In a bigger town, a bigger parade, there would be cars full of queens. Trucks and buses full of queens. There’d be enough queens for a full court on each of the hundreds of floats. There’d be wigs for days. Wigs for months!

Here, in the suburbs, there’s none of that. It’s a week before Seattle Pride, and the locals are holding a mini-parade, just a quick saunter around a couple of parks and what passes for a main street around these parts. Some representatives from LGBT groups in Seattle have said they’ll set up tents. The high school’s drama club, or possibly the show choir, will be holding a bake sale. The community college will probably send volunteers to throw out fliers about how inclusive their campus has become. A bunch of upper middle class families will be watching the queers go by as if it were a cross between an avant garde art show and a middle school soccer game. They’ll come away feeling more cultured.

Cookie Chan, who on weekdays is Clark Wu, middle-aged mid-level manager, is the only veteran queen of the only gay bar for miles around. (Please excuse her for having enormous buckets of salt. This past winter was surprisingly mild, so she has gallons of leftover salt that she is still using to sprinkle her driveway three months after the last snowfall.)

She is here because she is always here, and queer, and the ‘burbs have had twenty years to get used to it. She’s had twenty years to get used to _them_ – the closet cases who will cheer her on all weekend long, then awkwardly shift their gazes away on Monday morning. The small-town parades always bring up these unpleasant memories, even if they are also filled with the hopeful young faces of kids whose parents won’t let them attend the big-city events. Well… it doesn’t help that these kids are often chaperoned by low-grade homophobes with tight smiles on their faces, who always seem to be patting themselves on the back for how tolerant they are to indulge in their child’s “gay phase”.

This time will be different, Cookie tells herself. It’s the same thing she always tells herself, and it never works. The more she tries to convince herself that it will be enjoyable, the more she begins to wonder why she’s still here after twenty years. Is it because she’s a washed-up has-been who would never make it in the big city? Is it because she’s destined for mediocrity?

… Seattle Pride is next week, she tells herself instead.

It’s ten minutes or so before the parade floats begin rolling out, and as the only veteran queen of the only gay bar for miles around, it’s her duty to give the pep talk to the newbies. She never wanted to be a mother, but _somehow_ she’s gotten herself stuck taking care of these blonde bimbos. (They’d die without her. It’s a mercy mentorship.)

Here, in the suburbs, there’s only Cookie and her two dubious drag daughters, Pony Canyon and Ms. Adventure. Pony is a disgusting weeb brony wearing the skin of a fabulous manic pixie dream girl. Currently, she’s sporting rainbow streaks in her long icy blonde hair, rainbow thigh-high stockings, a shimmering pearl-pink miniskirt, rhinestone accents under her eyes, and a face caked full of iridescent highlighter.

On the other hand, Ms. Adventure is a chivalrous lady knight who should really be working at a Renfaire instead. She’s wearing historically accurate chainmail armor and has a real sword and everything. It would be hard to tell she was even attempting to crossdress if it weren’t for the wig and makeup, since only a hint of fake bust can be seen under all that armor.

The siblings are absolute dicks absolutely full of festering smegma and bullshit. Cookie would’ve disowned them ages ago if they weren’t so damn _dedicated_ to said bullshit.

“Listen up, ladies! I’m only taking you with me to Seattle if you do well today, but this parade is going to suck, and not in the good way!” Cookie says. “Well, tough titties. We’re gonna put on a show anyway!”

Missy raises her hand.

“Yes, what is it?”

“Can I lay back and think of England?”

Sigh. “You do that. Touch yourself to fantasies of King Arthur while you’re at it. And touch up your lipstick. Pony, check your rhinestones – one of them’s crooked.”

After touchups, they spend the remaining minutes in silence.

The parade begins, music and cheers fill the air. They roll out, three mismatched queens on a slightly creaky float, the side of which says PAINT Bar & Dance Club.

Pony prances and blows sparkling confetti kisses at the crowd. Halfway through the parade route, she pulls on the rubber unicorn head. (Or maybe it’s a robot unicorn head? Who knows?) Missy plays it cool, showing off a few action poses as she always does, as if Joan of Arc crossplaying counts as proper drag.

Cookie is left feeling oddly normal, which is not something an older queen in skintight leopard print usually gets to say when parading through the suburbs in broad daylight.

Fucking hell, she really loves her terrible shit daughters.

Throwing colorful beads left and right, Cookie is basking in all the attention until she feels the crowd’s attention shift… to a member of the audience.

There’s a single troll present at the day’s festivities, and all eyes are on him. He has parted the sea around him in a perfect circle and has completely turned the tides of the parade, at least for this little section of the route.

It’s not just that there’s a troll, though extraterrestrial immigrants are definitely still a rarity. It’s not even that there’s a troll – a member of a species who, as far as anyone knows, are all some sort of hermaphroditic or intersex and have no societal taboos against same-gender relationships – at a festival celebrating human sex and gender freedom. Certainly there have been trolls who have expressed confusion over human bigotry in these matters. It usually goes like so: “What? I came from a dystopian murder planet and even we didn’t care about who you wanted to bang! Sufferer bless!” Plenty of trolls have been known to show up to the larger LGBT celebrations.

No, it’s that there is a troll at the pride parade with red tears silently streaming down his face, and his expression can only be called beatific. He looks rapturous, all radiant with love and glowing with compassion like a painting of Alien Jesus come to life. That’s only his face though. To highlight the absurdity of the situation, the troll is wearing a plain black shirt, as trolls often do, though his lacks a sign. Instead, he seems to have peeled off one of the free rainbow stickers and pasted it dead center on his chest.

All three queens stare solemnly at him for a good full minute, heads turning as the float creaks past.

“Huh,” says Pony, Texan drawl muffled under the rubber unicorn head. “Don’t see _that_ every day.”

 

* * *

 

Signless is in love. The target of his affections? Everyone.

It’s a selfless love, a love beyond quadrants that he hadn’t known he was still capable of feeling. These strange alien creatures, these _humans_ , have brought it out in him again with their display.

Today is an auspicious day! The humans are celebrating love across boundaries, as depicted in this most glorious of signs, the rainbow! Whatever color you are inside or outside, you are loved. Ultimate hemo-unity. That’s the message Signless has always wanted to pass on to his followers – nay, to the world! – and that is what he is feeling now from this crowd and their countless rainbow flags. They _understand_ , these beautiful aliens!

He decides, then, that the rainbow will be his sign. Having gone a lifetime without a symbol to call his own, this lack had once been a source of pain. It had been a constant reminder of the oppressive society from which he hailed. In later years, he came to see it as a form of liberation, that he had no legacy to uphold and was therefore free to choose his own path. Signless thinks it would be good for more trolls, in the future, to be unmarked in grubhood and to be allowed to choose a sign that speaks to them when they are grown. He peels the backing off the little sticky square he’s been gifted and smacks it firmly over his chest.

Humans of all colors continue rolling past. Signless becomes so overwhelmed that he begins to cry tears of joy. When the parade finishes, the emotions have welled up so strongly in him that he feels the need to pull the nearest human into a hug. But they’re all strangers!

Except… there! The master of the squash display! He hugs her, and she laughs, and suddenly everyone else rushes in. He hugs them _all_ , and they all hug back! Signless shouts things, declarations of his boundless affections, and they shout back happily though neither side can understand what’s being said, but _hugs_.

It’s probably the greatest day of his life.

 

* * *

 

“So your cover’s been blown. You’re in the local newspaper and everything.”

He is, indeed, in the photo Aradia pushes over. Mid-hug, actually. The angle is quite nice. Signless doesn’t see anything wrong with this, and he says as much.

“I’ve made new friends, as was suggested. I have realized that the humans are friendly, and there was nothing to be anxious about in regards to living among them. I am moving on with my life.”

“That’s wonderful!” Her grin is, as always, much too wide. “Except for the part where you’re still the unwitting head of a cult.”

“Ah.”

“Mmm. It’s unfortunate. Cults tend to get a bit extreme when their ancient symbols of worship _actually_ come back from the dead, you know!”

“Ah.”

“We’ve been trying to keep your resurrection hush-hush, but since you’ve come out – pun intended – there are a lot of people who will want to drag – pun intended – you into the thick of things.”

“I don’t understand the puns, but I will be wary of that in future outings.”

“Speaking of which, I hear you’ve gotten involved with the Striders.”

Signless blinks. The name is unfamiliar. “Who?”

“Yellow hair, sunglasses?”

“Oh. The slaybitches. Yes, the slaybitches are friendly. They are giving me a ride to the next gayasfuck party. …What is a ‘gayasfuck’?”

Aradia’s smile stretches even wider. “I’m not going to be the one to explain that to you! But you shouldn’t repeat anything they say until your English is much, much better!”

 

* * *

 

Early Sunday morning, as the non-lethal yellow sun of Earth begins to peek over the horizon, a run-down vehicle bearing the name Pony Express pulls up on the street outside Signless’ apartment building. A moment later, a bubblegum pink vehicle bearing the name Catmobile neatly parks behind it. 

Signless is waiting at the curb, having been too excited to sleep much. He clutches a small bag containing his wallet, phone, and bottle of water. A part of him, still used to wandering lonely deserts, is slightly uneasy with the idea of having only such a small amount of liquids on his person, held in such a flimsy plastic container… But Tavros had stutteringly told him last time he’d stopped by the center to play with the newly confiscated clutch of freshly pupated lobstrosities that walking about with large military-grade canteens would be seen as a mark of insanity.

The bag had once been black. It is now covered in all the rainbow pins he has been gifted from his new gayasfuck human friends. It is an absurd amount of pins. Most people would say it’s too many pins, but Signless wanted to treasure each gift equally.

Also, he still has no idea what ‘gayasfuck’ means.

...Other than it’s apparently part of an acronym for the rainbow-bearing humans. ‘Lez be Gayasfuck Buttbuddies Together’, the slaybitches call their love-based social movement for the unity and empowerment of historically marginalized and oppressed human mutants and minorities. The only word Signless understood of that was ‘together’. Their older possible-lusus-figure had shaken her head, ripped off her wig, and smacked them with it, so it’s possible they were being disingenuous.

The slaybitch brothers lower the windows on the Pony Express. They turn their expressionless, shaded faces toward Signless.

“Hop in, bro,” says Dirk from the driver’s seat. This hoofbeast-themed scuttlebuggy is his, as befitting his hoofbeast-themed stage persona.

“Take the front,” Dave says, gesturing with a slight tilt of his head. He sits in the back next to a grumbling mound of snuggleplanes. “Oh. And don’t mind Crabs here. He’s not a morning troll.”

Their Alternian is surprisingly good, if strangely accented and interspersed with difficult English expressions not to be found in any dictionary. It’s not surprising, then, to see them keep the company of other trolls. Perhaps they work the human side of troll-human relations, Signless theorizes. Such a calling would be in line with those who already campaign to lift up the downtrodden humans among them.

He gingerly makes his way to the passenger seat while trying not to stare too much at the swaddled third figure who is apparently a troll. How curious.

The Pony Express starts with a sputter that sounds too much like a hoofbeast to be a coincidence. Once the car is in motion, with Signless continuing to sit stiffly upright and clutching his bag, he ventures forth with a question. “I have not yet had the pleasure to meet… erm… Crabs?”

This turns out to be _the_ question, as everyone stiffens and the atmosphere tightens just as much around the others as Signless had been feeling. Even the pile of snuggleplanes tenses up.

Dave begins to mumble. “That sure is a thing that hasn’t happened, which is totally a coincidence and not a result of you being a big deal religiously, like you _are_ troll religion at this point? Pretty sure most of the clowns died with the previous empress. They were absolute shit, anyway. But now a bunch of your worshipers have come aboveground and been converting new followers like crazy, including humans, and there are plans for a shitty megachurch somewhere. You’re a huge deal in trollworld, is what I’m saying, and no one knows what to do about that. Are we supposed to hide you away and forbid you from making public appearances so that your mere presence doesn’t stir the political pot into a frothing mess? Do we encourage you to interact with the church built around the retconned non-fact that you died for everyone’s sins? Do we just say fuck it and let you rainbow party all you want?”

“For the record, I’m for option three,” Dirk says. “We’re abducting you from your rightful place as Pope of the Sanctimonious Bullshit Church of Yourself and corrupting you with the forbidden knowledge of human bumfucking. We may or may not be attacked by your rabid followers. Be prepared for strife.”

“I am prepared for _peace_ ,” Signless says as firmly as he can.

“Right,” Dave picks back up, “especially watch out for the megachurch guys. They were getting real grabby at Karkat too, which is why everyone was holding off on having you broskis meet. Didn’t know how that would play out before you got your bearings. But bro, you cool. We, the kings of cool, vouch for your coolness. We’re doing this now before that fucking megachurch squeezes itself between you like a badly placed commercial break during the season finale. I mean, do you know the kind of revenue we could generate for the economy if we just taxed megachurches like the businesses they are? And also actually taxed megacorporations like the businesses they are? It’s just sound fiscal policy to make sure enough wealth cycles down to the little guys who are statistically shown to spend much higher percentages of their incomes rather than keeping all that dough clogged up and stagnating in the savings accounts of the ultra-rich. One person’s spending is another’s income. Economies are living beings, yo. They need regular bowel movements as much as anyone else does. Gotta unclog those pipes with some tax-yogurt directed at the biggest of turds. These faux-religious institutions are literally corporate entities that pay zero dollars back to the communities on which they feast.”

“Dave, shut up. No one wants to hear your opinions about the economy.”

This voice, a growl of exasperated fondness, belongs to a native speaker. The other troll. Signless, head spinning from the onslaught of mumbled bilingual mash, jerks his head around to regard his emergence from the pile.

The fabrics part. A gray face, unkempt hair, tiny horns emerge.

“Hello, honored ancestor who I am still having an existential crisis about.”

Signless looks into a mirror.

“Oh. Hello, treasured descendant who… whose existence defies probability? I’m sorry, these scripted ancestor-descendant interactions are very highblooded. I’ve never thought of what I’d say in case this happened.” Something queasy roils in the pit of his stomach. “I’ve never thought this _could_ happen, that anyone would have stolen my slurry and given it to the Mother Grub.”

Karkat shrugs. “People can get pretty extreme when their messiah is martyred. Go mad with grief, dedicate their lives to disseminating his teachings in the underground, have wigglers re-enact his bloody and glorious death every Perigee’s Eve, spread his philosophy within a secret Jade sisterhood who then go on to breed a new species of lusus targeted to his mutation… Why, they might even be driven to become giant nookstuffing perverts who collect and reconstitute the dried genetic scrapings of his used buckets in order to facilitate the Second Hatching.”

“I… don’t like the sound of that at all,” Signless says, frowning.

What desperation could have led his people to undertake such a disgusting endeavor? What untold suffering had they endured to have broken and strayed so far from the path he laid out? There are no answers from the car’s other occupants. The humans set their expressions to absolute neutral. Karkat sighs, weary from the weight of an unwanted legacy.

Signless slips into memories of his loved ones long gone. To him the grief is fresh, less than a sweep from his last clear memories of Disciple’s warm laughter, Psiionic’s crooked smile, Dolorosa’s delicate touch. It wasn’t long ago that he still woke up from soporless screaming nightmares about their possible fates, the details of which he had never been told.

The rest of their time is spent in relative silence, an inauspicious start to what should be a day of celebration.

 

* * *

 

The boys are fucking this up. 

Rose, knitting in the back seat of Roxy’s Catmobile, knows this without being able to peer into the other car. Knit, knit, purl. “Would someone remind me, again, why we allowed the Signless to step into a fast moving vehicle about to crash directly into his psychological doom?”

From the passenger seat, Nepeta’s hand shoots up and she replies without glancing away from her phone where she is still texting her moirail in the futile attempt to lure him out from his robot den with promises of sweaty shirtless musclemen on parade. “Because Karkitty was never going to work up the nerve to speak with his ancestor without them being trapped together in a small metal box!”

“Lol true,” Roxy says around a mouthful of food. One hand is on the steering wheel. The other is holding a breakfast sandwich that she is only somewhat successfully shoving into the masticating parts of her face.

“I agree with the necessity of that intervention. Dirk and Dave, though? I shudder to think of the sheer depths of verbal discharge the Signless is drowning in right this very moment.”

Kanaya, putting her head on Rose’s shoulder, says, “Dave is there as Karkat’s emotional support.”

“Dave’s probably more of a wreck than Karkat is. You would have been a better choice for that.”

Rose’s very Intelligent and Diplomatic girlfriend purposely ignores the second observation. “And Dirk is there as Dave’s emotional support.”

“A most horrid idea. My eldest brother is a great help in any intellectual pursuit, but there is one area in which his word should never be taken as law, and that is emotions.” Knit, purl. “...Roxy would have been better for that.”

“Aww, dat’s sweet, Rosie! Unfortch, this mornin I was messin with my look cuz I didn’t know if it was more of a masc or a fem day yet, so I had the shades on yanno. Karkat got a little ‘what do?’ when he saw me lookin a bit too much like Dave. Thought it’d be best to give him one less thing to worry about and not, like, have him trapped in a small metal box with his Jesus-daddy and two copies of the dude he totally wants to bang and should be bangin but it’s complicated? Or if Kanaya was there instead of Dave, we’d be reuniting Jesus and the Virgin Mary too? We don’t need any Christmas miracles in June, lmao.”

Rose sucks in the urge to scream “we all need therapy”. She also resists the urge to say “this Mary is not a virgin”. Both those things are beneath her. She says nothing, though the knitting needles clack together perhaps more harshly than they usually would.

The rest of their time in the Catmobile is spent idly chatting and gossiping about nothing of consequence.

 

* * *

 

When the city comes into view, Signless is torn between dread and euphoria. Excitement wins out when the first rainbows are spotted.

Humans come in so many colors! The sight is as beautiful as always. It never ceases to amaze. He thinks he could live at these events forever.

The car parks in what looks to be a preparation area. Many groups of humans in matching shirts mill about. Signless is pulled from his slack-jawed staring by the sound of the car doors closing. The brothers, and his own descendent, have exited. Signless, too, exits just in time to see the passengers of their sister vehicle, the Catmobile, make their debut.

There are two more slaybitches, and two trolls.

There are…

The trolls are…

The desert’s heat is oppressive, the air is burning his lungs. His mother once tall and proud is too thin now from giving up so many days of her rations for the little ones. Still she strides ahead, back straight as ever. None shall ever make her bend.

Sand stings his eyes. He blinks it away, tears clouding his vision. Shakily, he reaches his hand blindly to his beloved at his side. She meets him halfway.

“We’ll make it,” she whispers.

But they don’t, not nearly fast enough. There is movement under the dunes… The risen! The sun continues its ascent, rising higher and higher, dangerously higher…

Behind them, a gasp, a scream!

“I love pussy!”

Signless is snapped into the present.

A passing human female has stopped to admire the Catmobile. She is dressed in the matching shirt of one of the nearby groups, but has accessorized with rainbow cat ears. “Oh. My. Gosh. Your car is just. Purr-fect! And your ears are just. Purr-fect?!”

“Mew too! Pussy purr-ide!” says maybe-Disciple’s-descendant, also sporting a pair of fake purrbeast ears.

“Lol thanks!” says the pink-eyed slaybitch. She, too, appears to be part of some mysterious cat-eared cooperative.

“Aw yeah, you go gurls! Who all loves pussy?!”

“I love effuryone, nya!”

There are many questions Signless would like to ask regarding descendents and legacies and the fates that had befallen those most beloved by him. Some of the new friends around him are tense, perhaps waiting to answer or deflect.

But in that moment… In seeing the girl who could be Disciple’s daughter laugh so freely and make a friend so quickly out of a stranger… Signless thinks all is well in the world. All the suffering they endured is worth it for this bright rainbow future.

His heart is at peace.

When he opens his mouth, no desert sand comes tumbling out. Instead he asks, “What festival foods do humans typically enjoy? I have a craving for grub tubes on sticks, if there is anything analogous to that.”

 

* * *

 

“How is it that you have no questions?” Karkat asks. 

They – the ones not entering the parade – have set up camp chairs at a nice shady spot at the edge of the park where the show will pass by. They’ve been camping here defending this spot for _hours_ , and Signless hasn’t asked a single question of substance for _hours_. Karkat grumpily tears off a bit of breaded grub tube on a stick or, as the humans call it, a ‘corn dog’. Bleh. He’s pretty sure this industrial meat product has never touched either corn or dogs in its entire existence.

Hours earlier, Roxy had waved goodbye as she joined up with her something-gender-something group. Or, as Karkat likes to think of it, the ‘Seriously, Fuck Human Gender Rules. Why Does the Presence of Absence of a Bulge or Nook Dictate How You Should Dress? None of That Makes Sense, so Just Do Whatever You Want’ group.

This is in contrast to Dave’s ‘Sometimes Dumbass Humans Like to Cull Themselves Trying to Fit Into Unreasonable Ideals of Masculinity, and When That Fails, Instead of Becoming Someone Who Is Dead Inside or an Asshole Deserving of Death, Sometimes the More Fun Dumbass Humans Explode Into Fabulous Women on Nights and Weekends’ group.

“Gentlemen,” Clark had greeted the Strider brothers. “Let’s become ladies.”

Clark had that look in his eyes that Karkat had come to associate with the older man being ready to do a murder on someone. Karkat recognized this in himself as well, when the people around him were being idiots. But Clark was an older adult human with many responsibilities and underlings, so he didn’t have a moirail to pap him or kismesis to spar with. He couldn’t yell people into compliance like Karkat was culturally allowed to. All he could do was explode into a woman.

The Striders sensed this and went along without their usual nonsense sass. Dave had said, “Enjoy yourself, bro. Take care.”

And then he was gone. He had abandoned Karkat to this awkwardness with his ancestor.

“I’ve asked plenty of questions,” Signless says. “I’m afraid it’d be too much information at once if I asked about every passing curiosity. Oh, these grub tubes are delicious.”

Karkat isn’t sure if he’s deliberately being obtuse or if he’s actually that dumb. Knowing that he shares more than 99.8% of Karkat’s genes, it could be either. He shares a look with Kanaya, whose shrug seems to imply that she thinks they should just let him be pleasantly dumb.

Unfortunately, Karkat is actually that dumb. Against Kanaya’s advice, he pursues the line of questioning. “I mean about the whole ancestor thing.”

A pause. Then Signless resumes munching his disgusting grub tube. “I think you explained it rather well on the ride over.”

“No! Not just me, but Kanaya? Nepeta, wherever she ran off to? Seeing them doesn’t make you want to ask _anything_?”

A pause. Signless meets Kanaya’s eyes, then turns back to Karkat. Specifically, Karkat’s corn dog. “Are you going to eat that?”

“Aaaaaaahhhh!”

Rose, lounging on the grass beside them with her head in Kanaya’s lap, finally speaks up. “I believe Nepeta received a message of a troll contingent in the parade. She ran off in search of Eridan.”

“That’s _not_ relevant to the topic at hand, Lalonde!”

“Oh dear,” Kanaya says, “Is Eridan still planning to ‘descend upon the gender battlefield on a majestic seahorse’?”

“Probably. Knowing how dramatic he is, I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up shouting ‘for male pregnancy!’ while towing Nepeta along. She was strapping on a jet pack in the ladies room, last I saw.”

“Oh my god,” Karkat says. He is ignored.

Wordlessly, in defeat, he hands over his mostly uneaten corn dog to Signless who munches away happily.

 

* * *

 

Serato Prycep is a new convert to the Crimson Irons Church of the Signless Sufferer, though he is a zealous believer already. His belief is strong enough to have him assigned to the task of locating their erstwhile messiah, who hath returneth to the mortal plane only recently. Being a lifelong nomad, however, it seems he had wandered off to spread the Good Word on his own. The brothers and sisters of the Crimson Irons Church are cloaked head to toe in black as they try to channel the wandering spirit of their great leader through the colorfully-dressed crowd, heads bowed and hands held in prayer. 

While most of the humans out and about on this fine day are dressed colorfully, there are a statistically relevant number who wear muted blacks and grays with the occasional purple accent. Quite trollish! Like their colorful brethren, some of these are handing out small trinkets and pamphlets. ‘Asexual Awareness’, says one such pamphlet.

Ah, a name for the colorless ones. Serato says a quick prayer for the surprisingly large percentage of mutant humans born without reproductive organs, who likely must resort to expensive and government-controlled asexual cloning in order to start families. For humans do value genetic clades, do they not? He draws the symbol of the Sufferer over his heart. Amen.

He scans the crowd for any trolls not wearing the cloaks of the Church. There are few. Very few. Most Alternian congregations, pre-rebellion, ended in mass cullings. Especially when gatherings formed to worship the Sufferer. The older trolls still remember. Serato remembers his history lessons.

The search drags on for quite some time. It’s only when he stops to buy a grub tube on a stick that Serato catches a glimpse of the Lord in all his glory.

 

* * *

 

There are balloons and streamers and confetti and glitter. There are humans on stilts and on one-wheeled devices, and even in clown make-up but spreading love and harmony. No clubs, no murder. 

There’s a hunting pack of ladies on motorcycles which reminds Signless a little bit of old Alternia’s fearsome matriarchy and the female warriors who roamed the badlands where others dared not tread. His beloved Disciple had been one such huntress, though her pack had already perished when they first met.

Kanaya’s lovely matesprit Rose insists on scouring the line of food vendors for the choicest festival fare, which she continuously brings back to the others to test. Signless has been introduced to various human delicacies such as popcorn, ice cream, and cheese fries. They are all delicious, but still no human food is better than squash.

“Squash is my favorite food,” Signless says. Whether it’s to Kanaya or Karkat, he can’t say. No one responds, so Signless tears his eyes away from his deep contemplation of the lemon slice in his lemonade to see what holds his companions’ attention.

There’s a cloaked figure kneeling before him. Both Karkat and Kanaya are staring at this newcomer.

“ _What,_ ” says the young cloaked boy.

Had a question been asked? Signless shrugs. “Human foods, I was saying. Squash is best among all I’ve tried. Have you had squash? I’ve heard there are cold-season squashes as well. I’m very excited to try the famous ‘pumpkin’.”

“ _What,_ ” says the young cloaked boy, again.

“Pumpkin.”

“Um… Maybe you didn’t hear me the first time. How did it go again? Oh! O Sufferer, I beseech thee. Show this lowly mortal the way to true ascension!” he says, waving his arms in what would be a graceful and mystical motion if he didn’t have a human corn dog clutched in one hand. “Through your great compassion and the ultimate wisdom contained in the Vast Expletive--”

“Wait, wait, wait… Please call me Signless.”

The boy’s lower lip wobbles. He points to Karkat. “But you have a sign now, Lord! Your descendent wears it!”

Karkat flings his arms up into the air. “Nnnnnope! Noping out of here!”

“I too shall Nope the Hell Out,” says Kanaya.

Throughout this, the worshiper had continued on. “Your sign is glorious, Lord! The shackles, searing hot irons branding themselves into your wrists and into the hearts of all trollkind! Your death has given everything to us, and now this, your resurrection, has come! Tell us, o Lord, give us a sign! What are your faithful followers to do now in this new age!”

Perhaps more would have been said. Just as he had not thought about the possibility of a descendent, Signless had not thought about worshipers. All he can think of to say is probably blasphemous to whatever church had sprung up in his name: _Oh, don’t worship me for dying! I don’t want to be associated with shackles and suffering._ _Being tortured was very painful; I do not recommend it at all. There was a lot of stabbing and burning going on. I was just cussing everybody out so I’d have something else to do besides dreading where I would be stabbed next. Please,_ _I would prefer not to_ _have that moment define me,_ _and if there really must be a church made in my name, I’d like the focus to be on my messages of love_ _and freedom_ _._

Perhaps the worshiper would then have tried to convert the god of his own church with a pamphlet. But it is in that moment that the troll contingent of the parade passes by, and it is glorious.

At first there are only a few marchers, just like the humans before them. Suddenly, musclebeast robots explode into the air doing choreographed acrobatics. A majestic seahorse lusus descends from above bearing a seatroll in a cape and miniskirt. He screams in Alternian, “For male pregnancy!”

Nepeta, wearing a jetpack, swoops in from the back of the parade at lightning speed. She covers several blocks of the parade route in a matter of seconds and proceeds to loop around the spectators. She screams in heavily accented English something about cats.

Signless claps enthusiastically.

“You want my nookwit ancestor’s approval, yeah?” Karkat says to the stunned troll. He jerks a thumb over to the parade. “Go march for love or some shit. He’s got fuck all for brains besides that.”

Signless can’t even complain about the insults because it’s true. And the PAINT float creaks by behind the trolls, bearing his three favorite slaybitches. He _has_ to clap for them. Dirk’s horned hoofbeast head is especially glittery today.

 

* * *

 

Karkat sits behind the borrowing desk of the Alternian Community Outreach Center’s newly erected library. The library contains a mix of Alternian and human language materials. It’s a repository for anything regarding Alternian culture, and also features newspapers with positive stories about trolls on Earth.

Most days are quiet, and Karkat enjoys being able to read his romance novels in peace. There is perhaps what some would consider a disproportionately large number of romances in both the fiction, nonfiction, and DVD sections. Karkat would say “Fuck you, I’m the librarian, and I say it’s the perfect number.”

The door to the library is pushed open and a human child enters, pursed-lipped custodian in tow.

“Hello,” says the squishy mammalian pupa, “I’m doing a paper on the Signless’ rebellion and his movement as a parallel to modern civil rights movements on Earth.”

The wiggler is uncommonly well-spoken, so Karkat isn’t even grumpy when he motions for them to follow. “Here. Nonfiction history section. Newspapers are by the DVDs if you want to look up any of his current escapades. Anything else I can help you with?”

“No, this is good, thanks!”

While the wiggler delves into the books, the sour-faced custodian’s expression grows even uglier. “Lots of trolls around nowadays, huh. Enough to get their own library, huh. Well, grab the books you need and let’s go.” He says this as if he wishes his child had chosen any other topic at all so that he wouldn’t have to be confronted with his own prejudices.

Karkat patently does _not_ roll his eyes as he shuffles back to the front desk. He’s only just gotten into the confession scene of his latest novel when he notices the mini-human has moved to the newspapers.

“Oh wow, dad! Look, Signless is totally an icon in the gay community now!”

Lo and behold, it’s a front page spread of a paper from Germany featuring Signless at yet another parade, small rainbow painted on his cheek and stars in his eyes. Behind it, the kid pulls out another paper, this one dated two weeks prior, from Taiwan. Signless marching to celebrate marriage equality in Asia. It seems he had presided over a few weddings on that day, too.

It’s been a year since Signless began his world tour, and two since he began attending every rainbow-related event he could. He’s become the most well-traveled troll on Earth, but it still remains a mystery whether he knows what he’s marching for or not.

Or, well… that’s not quite true. Maybe he isn’t clear about the specifics of what the humans around him are marching for, but Signless knows exactly what he stands for, and it’s the same thing he’s been preaching all his life:

All colors are beautiful. Whether it be the color of your skin, the color of your blood, or the color of your love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Strider bros started crossdressing for the irony (and also as a roundabout, emotionally constipated way to show solidarity with Roxy’s gender experimentation) but couldn’t disengage and ended up seeing it all the way through. They have separate YouTube channels and blogs for their drag personas and everything. It’s like most things they do in life. The shades, for example. Wore them for the irony at first, then got so attached to the shitty things that they might as well be glued on.
> 
> Psii is 100% alive in this ‘verse and will be released into Signless’ loving arms pending extensive surgery and physical rehab. Then they’ll be two old troll dudes wandering around all the human pride parades, spending their well-earned retirement just enjoying the view of all the rainbows and love.
> 
> Umm… I should have saved this for pride month but it’s my birthday and I choose to reverse-gift this hot mess to everyone. I used to be a gay librarian… by which I mean I was a librarian at the local queer library. Somewhere on YouTube is a public TV clip where I make a cameo appearance sorting a pile of gay books. Just all the gayest books… Karkat’s library gig is based on that experience. But yeah, that’s the kind of shit I get up to, so please never take me seriously.
> 
> Also, right after Karkat has his one heartwarming thought about his absolute idiot of an ancestor, Signless comes busting in on the library all “Karkat I’m home!” and dumps a bag full of exotic snack foods right on the desk. There’s a baby lobstrosity clinging to his shoulder and a couple more hanging off his hideous rainbow bag. “Look! Crabson had babies!” He’s so excited about these crustaceans that love him, ‘cuz man he never had these on Alternia when he was growing up! Karkat is so lucky!! And Karkat is like “OMFG I KNOW HE HAD BABIES I WAS THERE WHEN TAVROS WAS TRYING TO STOP HIM FROM MATING WITH THE NEWLY CONFISCATED FEMALE!” But like… Karkat’s home is filled with little crab monsters too, so…


	2. Bonus Derpfest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allergen information: contains nuts

It’s a fact of the universe that most lives are unfairly cut short. Even among those peaceful species whose people rarely meet violent ends, there’s never enough time to experience everything one desires before memories fade and organs fail. Such are the limits of organic life.

In every self-aware species the Helmsman has encountered – and there have been thousands, now, throughout his millennium of service – the oldest tales are always about some shitty ruler’s quest for immortality.

That’s not a bad thing, in and of itself. Life wants to exist. It wants to spread. The universe itself wants to bloom with sentience. If it didn’t, everything would be Void and Doom, and that sort of universe would be a very boring place indeed. Immortality, though…

The reality of it is a problem because it’s almost never something that a society aspires to gain _together_. It’s almost always a few power-hungry monsters slaughtering others to prolong their own lives. While there are stories of it in every culture, none so far have come as close to true immortality as the troll empress herself, Her Imperious Condescension. Because of that, and perhaps because even psychotic fish monsters can feel some form of existential loneliness, there is her Helmsman too.

As powerful as the Condesce is, she isn’t without limits. She can only bend the laws of the universe so much. She can’t increase the total amount of life around her, so she has to take in order to give. Only by killing others can she live, and the longer she lives, the more sacrifices she requires. A sane being would never want immortality without being able to grant it to many others. Sane beings understand love, and they understand that life is meaningless without sharing it. That’s why sane beings are not nearly ruthless enough to gain powers on the level of the Condesce.

He’s attempted to shut himself down so many times now, it’s like a game between them. Helmsman hacks through whatever new security measures the techies have put around his brain. Condesce freezes him in place before he can unplug from life support. She comes down to the helmsblock to stop him every time, no matter what she’s in the middle of doing – conquering a planet or partying with clown priests. None of those things are important to her since she’s done them all so many times before. Immortality continues to make her more cruel and apathetic as sweeps pass.

The Helmsman is her Chosen One, the broken doll she keeps around to remind her that she’s still a troll. Her loyalists are reminded through his unnaturally extended existence that she has the power to grant life. Her enemies are reminded that she feeds on their deaths. Every failed coup only makes her stronger, and becoming fuel for her pet Helmsman is a mercy. After all, she could make pets of them instead if she so chose.

Why him, though? Many trolls have asked before. He’s far from the only psionic around, and not even the first or last to have so openly rebelled against her. Well, why not? Why does anyone feel attachment to one toy over another? Why does any lusus choose one grub over another? She just likes the look of him, that’s all.

And he hates her. It’s a hatred far too deep for romance. A hatred like pitch-black ichor, all rage and no attraction. He pities her, too, with a heart-sickness far too sorrowful for romance. Not pale as starlight or red with passion, but a pain-understanding lancing through his chest like white-hot lightning. It chars and cauterizes all his insides. He knows her like no one else does, and he knows she needs to die, but he’s too weak and broken now. He can’t be the one to do it.

What can he do? How can he hurt her even a little? Most days or deca-sweeps, the answer is nothing, but once in a very long while…

He tries again.

He senses a ping, a system alert. It might not be anything, but any event that breaks up the monotony of eternal servitude is worth noting. Perhaps it’s something that can distract his captors while he makes a run for it. Can he even run anymore? Shamble? Wriggle like a dying larva? Either way, he takes it as a sign to try again.

Hacking through the firewalls, accessing the internet. Distantly, so distantly, he notes that it has been over sixty sweeps since his last attempt. Returning command functions of his meatsack to his meatsack… He pulls the plug.

The security alarms sound right away and backup generators kick in seconds later. As expected. Helmsman – Psiioniic, as he is returned to his body, struggles to crawl out of the biowire pod with his weakened limbs. Condesce will be along any minute now, and it’ll be a race to see if he can be fast enough to find something with which to off himself. Even a screwdriver would be fine. He can line it up to the weakest part of his skull and slam it in.

He doesn’t want to die, but death is the far better option when his other choice is to continue being used as a weapon to oppress his own people – the ones he fought so hard to free once upon a time.

There is nothing sharp to be found. His body is slow from disuse, and the door to the helmsblock has auto-locked to prevent his crawl to freedom. Psiioniic flops to the floor, heaving. Waiting. Any minute now she will hoist him back into that blasted pod.

A minute passes. Then another.

Another.

Another.

Something strange is happening.

Perhaps he sleeps, perhaps he dreams. After being jacked in for so long, the concept of having clear boundaries between states of consciousness is beyond him. Still, when the doors finally open, it’s not the Condesce who walks in.

It looks a bit like her, but the girl is far too young. Her face is stern and shadowed, and far too mortal. She is flanked by trolls of various stations, adults and adolescents alike. Highbloods are among them, and other seadwellers too! Ah. Condie finally got too bloodthirsty for all but the most extreme loyalist factions to tolerate, eh? It only took _too damn long_ for those douchenuggets to pull their thumbs out of their nooks and take her down.

Psiioniic laughs. It comes out as a wheeze. He’s still a sticky glob of biowire fluid on the floor.

“Sollux,” the new empress calls out.

Behind her, another version of him steps up. Like some sort of out-of-body astral-projection bullshit, he faces himself and grins, both of him. His reflection says to him, “Thanks for the distraction. Nice timing, old man.”

 

* * *

 

“Where are we going?”

“Earth,” Sollux says. “The local sentient species rebuffed a few Alternian conquest attempts. They’re stubborn as fuck.”

His descendent sounds fond when he speaks of the aliens. Psii nods. “They helped plan the coup?”

“Well, yeah. The Condesce was going to send the main fleet after them. It was their only option for survival. We have a deal now,” he says with a tiny shrug. “Alternian tech in exchange for human philosophies and governing strategies and shit, and their weird lusus-like behavior toward our young, elderly, and infirm. Their mind tricks, basically. Did you know they’re all psy null?”

“Learning mind tricks from a psy null species, huh. What has the world come to.”

“Yeah, the deal is set to favor them on purpose, as reparations. Even so, the best of them can tell what you’re thinking just by running simulations of your past behaviors in their pan. Takes less than a second and they’ve got your hopes, dreams, and motivations all figured out.”

“No need for force or intimidation?”

“Nah. They’ll sit you down over a cup of leaf juice and chat like hatefriends. Before you know it, you’re crying into their arms like you just found your long-lost moirail. Even if you don’t say anything, your silence tells them everything. They strategically used the leaf juice breakdowns to convert troll POWs to their cause.”

“Hmm. Sounds like someone I used to know.”

Physical recovery had been long and hard. Psii’s still only halfway there. Mentally, though, he’s not sure. Some days he can think of Signless with nothing but fondness. Some days it’s nothing but grief. When he can handle it, he reads to patch up the holes in his knowledge of all the centuries of history that have passed. It makes him feel an unnameable ache of pride-sorrow-rage at how the later rebellions continued to be inspired by this one crazy troll who dared to love when society told him to hate. In a way, they were all iterations of the same rebellion. Signless’ fight never ended.

“Yeah, speaking of that particular someone, we sent some of our friends there as refugees, before the fighting got bad,” Sollux continues. “Signless’ descendent, and the Summoner’s. Let’s just say… they’re not the strongest fighters. But we needed them alive in case we failed, so they could rally the remaining forces and keep the rebellion alive. And then some of our other friends went to start new lives after the fighting was done. A lot of trolls have settled on Earth now. They’ll be able to take care of you.”

There’s a lot to unpack in that statement – that Signless left a descendent, or maybe one was made for him somehow, and that he’ll be meeting or even living with the ghost of his best friend. It’s safer not to speak of it. He asks instead, “Are you not coming to stay, then?”

Sollux grimaces. “I don’t think so. Feferi needs _someone_ at her side. We can’t all just abandon her after everything she’s done for us.”

There are others who could stay, who _are_ staying, Psii wants to say. He doesn’t. Sollux would shoot down all his arguments anyway. That clown priest? Too unreliable, he’d say. The legislacerator? Too ambitious and cunning in her own right. Not one of them is good enough for the child empress to whom he’s given his loyalty. The closeness between his descendent and the Condesce’s rankles at Psii, but it’s also too easy to understand.

 

* * *

 

So the Psiioniic is sitting across from him at the low table. Tavros pours his guest a glass of water and sets it down along with a slice of Nigella Lawson’s famous White Tiramisu – recipe modified for lactose intolerance, of course. Most trolls are mildly so, since grubs don’t do the mammalian thing of suckling liquid nourishment from the teats of their female progenitors. No, the dessert is made with nut milk – _homemade, fresh-squeezed,_ _thick and creamy_ nut milk, the excess of which sits ready for consumption in the fridge – that Tavros would absolutely serve to his guest if not for the fact that Dave has been giggling over it.

Not that the giggles have stopped Dave from _drinking_ said nut milk, and in fact he seems to be the number one consumer of it. It’s suspicious, is all. Even Dirk has gotten into it, despite previous comments about not wanting to go after “low-hanging sacks”, whatever that meant, isn’t the idiom “fruit”?, and when the Striders came over for last week’s board game night they contorted themselves into a weird incestuous homoerotic nut-milk-drinking pose for an ‘ironic selfie’.

“I thought humans didn’t do incest?” Tavros asked.

“Correct,” Dirk said. “But also incorrect. Humans occasionally do incest. Humans just think doing incest is shameful for complex social and genetic reasons which would take too long to adequately explain.”

“Oh. Um. Do you do incest?” He wondered if it counted as cheating if it was incest.  
Then he wondered if it counted as cheating if Dave and Karkat were only _sort of_ together in that really frustrating soap opera way.

“Hell no,” said Dave. “That’s why we pretend we do.”

“Okay, I guess… That didn’t make any sense, but I’m going to pretend it did. But, ah… You’d tell me if nut milk was an incest joke, right? I don’t want to keep offering it to guests if it makes them uncomfortable.”

At this point, the Striders looked at each other. They communicated silently, and then as one pulled Tavros into their bosoms.

“Come rest your horns on my ample man-titties, sweet child,” Dirk said with absolutely no inflection to his voice whatsoever.

“Yes, my pure, sweet, innocent pupa. May you remain like this forever,” Dave said. He tried very hard to sound as Dirk did, though he shook to suppress a giggle.

Karkat walked in on them just like this and promptly walked back out, muttering “I don’t want to know. _Seriously_ , don’t ever tell me.” In the end, neither of them directly answered the question of why nut milk was so scandalous, and Tavros had learned long ago not to Google human sex terms.

...It was probably an incest thing.

In the present, Tavros is smiling as comfortingly as he can. Tavros likes to think he’s a good host. …In Earth terms, of course. On Alternia you were considered a decent sort of troll if visitors to your hive didn’t end up as lusus food more often than not. The only one of his wigglerhood acquaintances to fail that test was Vriska, and now she’s out there being an actual space pirate, so that about explains it all when it comes to her. (Was raised by an evil mind-control spider. Bad hygiene, no manners.)

Earth-hosting is much more complicated, though. He’s been watching a lot of old re-runs of Martha Stewart and Marie Kondo and MTV Cribs, and now the hive – with the exception of Aradia’s room (“my occult dungeon, Do Not Enter”) – is very tastefully decorated only with things that Spark Joy.

Tavros’ new goal of becoming a domestic goddess is on track. This is probably why he’s been left to host the infamous Psiioniic while his hivemate goes flying with Sollux, who couldn’t even be bothered to say whether he would be joining them for dinner after all the _sweeps_ they’ve spent worrying about him. _Rude_. (Was raised by himself and troll WikiHow. Bad hygiene, no manners.)

Psiioniic shovels the food into his maw like a starving man, which is probably not far from the truth. Tavros would tell him to slow down, take it easy, don’t spoil your appetite because dinner’s gonna be _great_ , I mean do you know how many human TV shows there are just dedicated to food preparation techniques? but then the elderly troll is just so _pitiful_ licking his fingers like that. Tavros cuts him another piece instead. What did he eat while he was grafted into a battleship, anyway? Nothing as good as tiramisu, that’s what.

 

* * *

 

The empress sent her political allies to Earth – those who couldn’t be risked in a fight, but could take up the lead if she should fall. Psii doesn’t think this soft pupa could lead _anything_.

Well, unless he was just trying to lure hungry people into his kitchen – that could work.

Oh, yes, it’s Summoner’s descendent. Of course he’s figured it out. Of _course_ he knows about that cavalreaper rebellion, since Summoner’s execution was the last time the Battleship Condescension was docked on Alternia. It was endless space thereafter.

Even out there, there were certain things Psii couldn’t avoid. Legends of the Summoner was just one of those things. He was everywhere until speaking his name was outlawed, and then he was secret ‘coon-time stories told to wigglers through the same underground channels that kept Signless’ legacy alive, and then he was everywhere again as Pupa Pan. All those subversive anti-empire books and movies hiding in plain sight...

Psii doesn’t have much to say to the other troll. His own descendent had wanted to go flying with the girl troll, who is obviously the bodyguard for this one no matter what drivel they spout off about being “human-style hivemates”. Tavros doesn’t seem much good at starting conversations, either. He’s still smiling like an idiot.

“Your wings coming in yet?” Psii finally asks. It’s likely they gave him a flight-capable bodyguard to prepare for that possibility.

“Uh? Uh, no? I mean, I haven’t felt anything like that, um, growing out anywhere, though it would be nice if it were, something that was happening. Heh.”

All right, that’s awkward. Psii knows he hasn’t really been practicing this ‘conversation’ thing since he was busy being a battery for centuries, but he can definitely do better than that! He’s survived so much worse. Like hell is he going to let this pupa be his defeat!

“What’s for dinner?”

_Ding ding ding! Correct!_

Tavros begins rambling about stews and roasts and grainloaf-making techniques and “using bamboo steamers for a more grublike consistency”. And nut milk, whatever that is. He seems very passionate about squeezing nuts in a sack to extract white fluid from them.

 

* * *

 

Eridan wakes up in the morning. Going outside while the sun is out and not burning into a crisp is nice. Earth is nice.

Once upon a time he would’ve hated that, but then his ship got shot down in the war, and the humans took him captive, and instead of making sushi out of him the nice lady in charge of the human prison ship started smushing his cheeks and saying, “But you’re just a _baby_!”

The interrogation session ended with him being stuffed with tea and cookies and crying into her arms. It’s a little embarrassing to think about, but he would _die_ for Admiral Nanna Egbert. After that, a little treason was nothing. Besides, it was the Condesce who tried to kill him first, trying to off him via suicide mission for his ties to Feferi.

So Eridan is trying his best to embrace the nice things that made Nanna so strong. Non-murderous, non-maim-y things. He is trying to be _Earth_ -fierce, which apparently just means being on top of things, fashion-wise. That has always come easily.

Getting dressed is almost the same as it always has been. Glasses. Cape. Scarf. All very fierce, his Instagram followers assure him. It’s his signature look, and he wouldn’t be Earth’s sexiest Alternian ambassador otherwise. There wouldn’t be cosplayers of him otherwise. The humans are #thirsty, and Eridan’s bringing the whole damn ocean.

What’s different now is the new range of colors and styles available for tops. No need for sign-on-black-shirt anymore, the humans say. After all, it’s not like human nobles went around flashing their family crests everywhere. Everyone recognized royalty even if they didn’t display their exact lineage on every outfit.

Today is a crop-top and shorts day, Eridan decides. He manages to post two pouty-faced selfies for his adoring fans before the shouting from downstairs gets too loud to ignore. The drawbacks of living with Karkat are his obnoxious human maybe-matesprit (curse him for having more followers, Eridan _will_ catch up), and the noise.

Looking around downstairs, Karkat’s not in the house proper. Eridan slides open the door to the back yard. Not in the pool, either, though Crabdad is there teaching five of his tiny spawn how to ambush pool noodles. His mate, a slightly more shrimp-looking crustacean who had been liberated from the burgeoning illegal trade in Alternian wildlife, relaxes in a lounge chair next to Seahorsedad.

Tavros had scheduled her to be snipped, but then Crabdad jumped into her holding pen while no one was watching, and now there are at least twenty little crab things crawling around the hive. This is why lusii are no longer allowed at Alternian Community Outreach Centers worldwide.

One of the other crabsibs makes its way up to Eridan’s shoulder as he’s contemplating the scene. “Skree-snap-snap,” it says.

“Hey, I ain’t a crab. Take your claw-snaps elsewhere.”

Crabsib burrows into his scarf. If it’s still there later, Eridan will let it star in another selfie.

The noise seems to be coming from the side of the house, from the little squash garden that Karkat has been tending for his ancestor. Signless lives in an apartment with not much space for growing things, and he’s too much of a globe-trotter to bother with finding new housing. And Karkat, well… Karkat has always been the most caring troll any of them know, so he keeps growing squash for his ancestor even as he screams about how annoying it is.

Karkat’s voice gets louder and louder. It’s a good thing they have a lot of yard space and the nearest neighbors are a safe distance away. As Eridan tromps around the corner, he sees Karkat, covered in crabsibs, raging at the sky with a garden trowel in hand. Karkat lets out his loudest screech yet, and Eridan follows the upward trajectory of the sonic assault to see it aimed at two trolls flying away.

“Come back here, you sons of bitches! You can’t just drop these fact nukes on me and run away! Take responsibility!”

Wait. Is that Sollux?

It is so Sollux. Eridan, immediately incensed, begins screaming right alongside Karkat. “Sol, you yellow-bellied coward, come face me! Our duel isn’t finished!” (It has remained unfinished for upwards of four sweeps now, past conscription and the war and everything, and Eridan is still sore about it.)

Sollux and Aradia become tiny specks in the sky. Their psy flares wink out in the distance. Panting, heaving for breath, the two flightless trolls meet each other’s eyes.

“What the fuck just happened here, Kar?”

“You tell me, mister hotshot diplomat! Aren’t you supposed to get advance notification from the embassy _before_ important visitors drop by?”

That’s a good point. Eridan whips out his phone in a smooth, practiced motion. His assistant is on speed dial.

The phone rings six times, as it always does, before Aquala Orsino picks up. She answers, as she always does, in her typically slow manner. “Helloooo, Ampora’s office Aquala speakinnnnng, how may I help y—”

“Aq, seriously, I’m calling you on mobile. Nobody says that on mobile, and you have caller ID. Get with it, girl.”

“Soooorry, boss, just tryna be professional...”

“Well that’s a shitty way of— Nevermind. I need you to check my correspondences for the past, say, two weeks? See if there’s been any word from the empire regarding visits or inspections or somesuch, and anything involving Sollux Captor.”

“Oooon it!” Muffled typing sounds can be heard for a few seconds, then “Nope, nothing!”

Eridan scoffs. “Fuck this shit. Aq, draft up a complaint to the empress for me, will ya? I want it, like, really strongly worded. One ‘fuck’ per paragraph, at least. Short paragraphs.” He brings the phone down, about to end the call, and then whips it back up. “Oh, also, if her response in any way uses the pun ‘clam down’, I want you to tell her, in these exact words, ‘you can take your clams an’ make chowder out of ‘em, ya shellfish beach’!”

“Goootcha! (Ehe, that’s pretty black!)”

_Beep._

Call ended, Eridan takes a few calming breaths, gets his fins back under control. Karkat is hunched over the corpse of a weed, pulverizing it with the trowel.

“What did Sol say that got you so riled up, anyway?”

“Oh, you know, the usual. The Psiioniic was recovered from the Battleship Condescension and they’ve been keeping him secret. He’s our responsibility now, surprise!” Karkat waves his arms in sarcastic jazz hands.

“...Uh huh. And where is he now?”

Eridan drags Karkat behind him on the way to Team Charge’s base. They bring squash as gifts.

 

* * *

 

Signless’ descendent keeps glaring at Psii. Right after stilted introductions, he says, way too loudly, “I’m not angry at you, I’m angry at Sollux. He’s like a pigeon – you know, a wasteheap flapbeast – always flying overhead and defecating on people. Sorry if I end up taking it out on you by accident because of the whole clone thing.”

Psii doesn’t say anything in return. He’d known it was an eventuality, but seeing that too-familiar face isn’t easy. Signless is– was gentle and often soft-spoken. Karkat is loud and crass and just… just not the one his heart yearns for. It isn’t anything the young troll has done himself. Still, Psii stays silent.

He remains silent throughout the ranting and flailing that follows Aradia’s return (but not Sollux’s), choosing instead to observe the strange sea troll who had accompanied Karkat. He doesn’t trust seadwellers. Back in the day, they were slavers, all of them.

Perhaps it’s his age showing, or just his ignorance of Earth culture, but he can’t even begin to comprehend that outfit. It doesn’t help that this “Eridan” insists on making fish lips at his portable communications device at every turn. The absurd getup is what trips Psii up, what makes him take so long – until they’re all seated and about to begin dinner – to recognize those horns, that violet hair streak. His passive staring turns heated, and he can’t help the growl that escapes.

Karkat takes that as a sign to growl back. “Are you _judging_ me, old man? What, I don’t live up to the god-like standards set by my ancestor, so I get the cold shoulder? You haven’t said a single word to me aside from that greeting grunt, and now you want to start something?”

“Uh, Kar, I think he’s judging _me_.”

At least that one’s quick on the uptake, fat lot of good it does. “That’s Dualscar’s boy,” Psii says, barely holding in a hiss. “You trust _him_ to guard you? What are _any_ of you wigglers thinking? Summoner’s descendent has less fight in him than a, a soggy grubloaf! And all he gets is a single _mid_ -level psionic? And you’d all trust Signless’s descendent to the spawn of the _most heinous slaver_ Alternia has ever known?!”

It’s definitely not the first thing he wanted to say to Signless’ descendent, but this is _important_. Survival skills are _important_. Nothing good ever comes from trusting seadwellers. Psii can’t tell when he lost control and started hissing everywhere, or when the helpless tears started rolling off his face.

Helpless, _helpless_ , always so goddamn helpless!

The wigglers are all staring at him. Dinner is ruined, all the heaping mounds of food gone to waste, all of Tavros’ effort gone to waste, and now he knows the boy is doomed and it’s all his fault, it’s always his fault, always too late to save anyone despite all his powers—

“Oh my gog, grandpa! Nobody is anybody’s bodyguard!” Karkat’s sudden shout snaps everyone’s attention. “ _We_ ,” he says, gesturing to the seatroll and himself, “are shitty hatefriends who both happened to have semi-aquatic lusii and decided to share a pool out of convenience, and _they,_ ” he says with a dismissive flick of his fingers toward Tavros and Aradia, “are a FLARP team gone too far.”

“Hey,” Tavros objects. “That’s rude and not at all true. I think we have gone, the perfect distance.”

Aradia laughs. “Well, it’s kind of true by the old Alternian standards. But once you’ve found someone you can trust to watch your back when surrounded by the enemy, zombies, or hungry Alternian wildlife, it’s only logical to live with that person so as not to be killed. Far fewer trolls would have been murdered if they’d only handled their platonic partnerships with more loyalty.”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean by _too far_. None of those things are a problem anymore, and you weren’t living together when they were!”

“Well,” Aradia says, hands coyly clasped in her lap, “I wasn’t his bodyguard back then, was I?”

Karkat’s eyes widen. His pupils look like they’ve swallowed the rest of his face. “No. Eridan, you’re _not_.”

“Only part-time.” Eridan sniffs. “I’m more of a deterrent than anything. I’ve been trained in how to wave a human shotgun and scream ‘git off ma lawn’ in ‘true Texan style’. It’s been very effective against the Church’s would-be kidnappers. They used to come every Saturday while you’re doing your livestream. It’s been too quiet lately. I think they’re up to something.”

Psii sniffles, feeling even more miserable now that he’s come back to himself. Times have changed; Earth is a safe place. Karkat is not Signless, no matter how much he misses his friend, and Eridan is not Dualscar. For one, Dualscar would never have been able to strike fear into the masses wearing… _that_.

A moment passes where no one knows what to do next. Then Karkat gets up and tugs at Psii’s arm. He sighs softly and says, for the first time since they met, in a _quiet_ voice, “Come on, feelings jam time.”

Somehow, Psii ends up in a scandalous five-troll pile in which none of the participants are quadranted in any way. Dinner is cold when they finally get around to it, but the food is still delicious enough to make him cry all over again.

Even when Sollux sneaks back in to stuff the leftovers down his gullet, say a rushed good-bye, then run away cackling before the others can catch him, it’s all so… nice.

Earth is nice.

 

* * *

 

“Please lift your leg a little higher,” Kanaya instructs, “as far as you can go without pain.” Her newest patient grumbles, but reluctantly fixes his form. He’s a grumpy older troll, but Kanaya is used to that. Most of her patients are.

This particular grumpy old man is a psionic, though, and all her fellow troll medical specialists will admit that injured psionics are The Worst. Even uninjured psionics sometimes suffer from muscle loss because they can brain zap themselves anywhere and physical movement is a _hassle_. Helmsmen rehabilitation is The Worst Of The Worst due to how long they’ve spent, on average, being completely immobile and living solely within their own minds. To top it all off, this particular grumpy old former helmsman is The Original. He is therefore The Extra Worst.

Step by step, the Psiioniic slowly completes his stretches and walks the assigned route around the therapy section of the gym. He would slack off if Kanaya wasn’t so insistent on keeping to the plan. She “encourages” her most troublesome patients by subtly glowing and beginning to hiss softly whenever they try to cheat. That this light show often attracts the attention of Karkat’s crab siblings, who have now taken to hanging around the Center because they’re getting to that age where “enriched learning environments” are important to their growth as individuals (according to Rose), is just a bonus. There’s nothing like being gawked at by baby lusii to push ornery old psionics to do their best.

Today, the little crabs have brought along their eldest sibling – that is, Karkat. Three of them tug him along by the pant legs. Karkat isn’t the best at communicating with the Psiioniic, or perhaps anyone, really, but he’s trying. He’s been working up the courage to tell the Psiioniic about The Thing, and it appears that, as the humans say it, Today Is The Day.

Kanaya is trying her best to be The Supportive Friend And Voice Of Reason. She says, “Good work. Let us adjourn to the library for tea and an important conversation.”

“Kanaya!” Karkat grumps because he is a grump.

“What. You’ve drawn this out long enough. He is arriving soon.”

“Don’t– don’t say it out loud like that!”

If the Psiioniic hadn’t been suspicious before, he definitely is now.

“How else was I supposed to say it, if not out loud?” Kanaya asks, honestly puzzled. “When things are not said out loud, there are often misunderstandings.”

“It’s _embarrassing_ if you just say everything right up front! Subtlety is _important_.”

“...I see.” Kanaya pauses to carefully consider her next words. “Karkat? Have you considered that your idea of ‘subtlety’ is the reason why I am happily engaged while you and Dave are still struggling to hold hands over a movie?”

“I – what – no? We’re not talking about me! And besides, you aren’t engaged! No way you’d get engaged and tell me about it in a way as stupid as this!”

“Well, that is true enough, but I am about to be engaged. Probably this weekend, if the weather is nice. I have the ring prepared and everything, and yes. I will just say it. Out loud.”

“Congratulations,” says Psii.

“Thank you,” Kanaya replies. Then she levels her best See What I Mean? look at Karkat, as if to say Communication Is Important, And This Is How Adults Do It.

 

* * *

 

Psii has spent many afternoons in the quiet corners of the library, usually near the history section, continuing to catch up on missed events. Sometimes, because it can’t be avoided with Karkat as the librarian, he has also – yes, also perused the occasional romance novel. The post-Condesce ones are much more creative in their relationship dynamics.

Karkat has always seemed fidgety in his presence, despite the one time they piled, and perhaps a bit overprotective of the newspapers. Psii isn’t stupid, so he knows there’s something they don’t want him to know at the moment. But the library is spacious enough, and generally empty during the hours he prefers, so it is easy enough to give Karkat space.

There is no such buffer between them now. They are facing each other over a tray of leaf juice and cookies, the infamous interrogation strategy that had been one of the first things he learned about humans. Apparently the Earth-resident trolls have adopted it.

No one is partaking of the refreshments except the small lusii, and Kanaya is wiping their mandibles of crumbs. Karkat’s teeth grind, and his claws twitch, and finally he snaps.

“Okay, fine! I will just say it! Out loud!”

Kanaya shakes her head furiously and mouths “nooooooo”, and all the crabsibs pause with eyes wide and mouths open. Multiple cookies fall to the floor seemingly in slow motion. It’s too late to stop Karkat.

That is how Psii learns about Signless.

 

* * *

 

Aquala yawns, absent-mindedly covering her mouth with one hand as the other continues towel drying her hair. She has just finished a nice swim in the pool, and it’s prime napping time. The community center is quiet, too, as it’s a Tuesday afternoon. There hadn’t been anyone in the pool besides some baby crab lusii rowing a pool noodle raft.

Man, those things are everywhere nowadays…

It’s good though, that she’s here when it’s not so busy. Most Alternian refugees and expats tend to be warm-blooded, and they have every right to be wary of a seadweller like her, even though Aquala thinks she’s about as nonthreatening as a violet can be.

Her boss, though. He’s scary. Got a badass laser gun and everything, or had one, anyway. Word is, he could shoot down whole ships on his own with that thing, back in the day. He’s still kinda scary even when he shows up to work covered in these baby crabs.

Speaking of which, this morning Mr. Ampora had strode in all business-like. Like, in the so-sharp-it’ll-cut-you suit and the shiny leather pointy shoes and that one pair of glasses that may or may not be concealing lasers. And he was all, “Important negotiations blah blah!” and “Go make yourself useful blah blah!”

...And long story short, she was sent on Holy Descendant guard duty. He even gave her a taser.

Nothing ever happens on Holy Descendant guard duty. Karkat’s a _librarian_ , for Glb’golyb’s sake! Sure, some extreme sects of Sufferists had tried to kidnap him before, but their main church is in, like, southern California? Would they really track him all the way up here to nowheresville? So Aquala meanders around the community center while still in her swimsuit, taser completely forgotten, making for the nice nap spot by the parking lot.

She’s met by the sight of hooded cultists swarming out of an unmarked van.

“Fuuuuuck.”

 

* * *

 

In the past few years, the Crimson Irons Church of the Signless Sufferer has gone through many changes. Their beliefs and leadership have both been updated to reflect the changing reality of their most glorious Lord and Savior’s resurrection and subsequent teachings.

In addition to televising their sermons as is the custom for human churches, the cloaks of the brothers and sisters of the church are no longer black as if in mourning. Nay, they are now rainbow.

One would think this is a huge sacrifice in stealth, but in truth it has allowed them to blend seamlessly into the human events that their Lord is so fond of. The downside is that humans who are not aware of the church’s teachings often ask if they are homosexual.

This is a difficult question for trolls, who have many genders but only one biological sex. Technically, all troll-on-troll concupiscent behaviors are homosexual. Then the humans who, if they are asking are therefore not well-versed in troll biology at all, will ask how an all-homosexual society can function. And of course the answer is that homosexual intercourse is the only way trolls can naturally produce offspring. Many humans then become confused and sometimes even angry. But that is beside the point.

Serato Prycep is nearing full priesthood. He was the blessed one to have first made contact with the Lord in person and alerted the church to the Lord’s new commandments: to love and learn from their new human neighbors, and to venerate The Squash.

To celebrate his imminent rise in the hierarchy, he has led many of his most trusted brothers and sisters on a secret pilgrimage to the holy site where the Sufferer’s descendant may be found. This is different from the past pilgrimages to the descendant’s place of residence, for it is the season for the most holy squash Pumpkin, and they come bearing many gifts and apologies for the church’s previous actions.

Each of his brethren holds a squash. They file out of their vehicle in a single line, heads and hands obscured by the colorful cloaks, chanting the holy scripture. The doors to the Alternian Community Outreach Center are graciously open – ah, praise be! – so they march right in. Serato is at the head of the procession, so he doesn’t notice until he has turned the corner toward the library that they are under attack!

Sister Hyllah shrieks as she is leapt upon from behind by a crazed (and strangely scantily clad) seadweller. She falls to her knees, using her own body to protect the sacred pumpkin.

“Reeeee!” the seadweller screams. “C’mon, I’ll take all a ya on, cultist fuckers!”

As if that weren’t enough, it’s at this point that an otherworldly howl rips through the entire building, followed by a loud boom. The very foundations shudder! The door to the library bursts open before them!

The light coming from inside is nearly blinding. A powerful psionic has just lost control and blasted a hole through the ceiling. The lasers continue shooting upwards while the other occupants of the library evacuate.

Karkat is among them, and upon seeing him, Serato grins widely. He is so glad the Descendant is safe! So he says, “I’m so happy to see you, and so glad you’re safe!”

Karkat says, “Fuck, it’s you.”

They of the Church know this is how he greets everyone. Serato is so very blessed to be acknowledged in such a familiar way.  It's almost like they're friends.

 

* * *

 

Meanwhile, in the beat-up rusted junker still bearing the name Pony Express, though the paint has peeled enough on the latter word that many passers by first read it as ‘Pony press’ and are confused as to what this means and if it’s a small-time newspaper or weird sex position or something?, three humans and one troll sit conversing about how good it will be to get everyone together again. Two of the humans have taken days off from their jobs in the human side of troll-human relations in the Alternian embassy. Today, after all, is when Ambassador Ampora is having his bi-sweeply conference with the Empress, and no one wants to be in the office to watch them intergalactically pitch flirt with each other for _hours_.

The other human is taking the afternoon off from dead-end corporate drudgery to promote his weekend gig. Clark is not in drag, but he is carrying many promotional materials for PAINT featuring his busty alternate self. They are destined for the information and resources table at the Alternian Community Outreach Center, because troll gender is human-weird, and they could use more places to feel welcome.

The troll, of course, is Signless.

He had just been in Australia and wasn’t scheduled to be back until next week. However, he had fallen into the habit of surprising his descendant with his returns. Karkat’s yelling is so _cute!_ Of course, Signless is also looking forward to playing with his Crabson’s offspring again, and also squash season.

“Dude, you still haven’t tried a pumpkin spice latte?” Dave is incredulous. “We need to get one in you ASAP.”

“But I was led to believe there are no pumpkins in them,” Signless says. “There is only the spice that is often used in the cooking of pumpkins.”

“Bro,” says Dirk, “Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Pumpkin juice.”

They turn in to park beside an unmarked van. As they exit the vehicle, they’re just in time see a bikini-clad troll leap out of view and presumably onto someone’s back, if the scream is anything to go by…

_Fwoooosh!!!_

And then the roof of the library blows up.

“Why is this my life?” Clark asks the heavens. They do not respond.

The Strider bros look on stoically.

Signless, though. Signless knows exactly who this is. “He’s alive, then?” he says calmly.

“Yup.”

“You’ve recovered him?”

“Yup.”

“That is good. All right, I will just be a moment.”

He marches into the building, past the mob of rainbow cultists and other assorted figures. Distantly, he wonders if his bad timing on this day will result in further propagation of the religion that has sprung up in his name. But that is not important. People will believe as they will.

Signless is grinning widely as he comes up to Psii. He gives his very best hug to his very best friend.

 

* * *

 

It’s the warmth that brings him back, that aching familiarity that has haunted so many of his dreams. Signless looks just as he remembers, yet completely different all at once. Psii hasn’t seen him in so so so many sweeps that it could be measured in multiple lifespans of even the longest living trolls.

And yet they pick up right where they left off, just as the best of friends always do.

 

* * *

 

The scene that Dave walks in on is two old trolls hugging it out like they’re the only two geezers in the universe. A sea of rainbow-cloaked cultists surrounds them, kneeling, praying, and offering pumpkins. Some are frantically scribbling new scriptures or Signless/Psiioniic fanfic or something.

Kanaya looks frazzled. Tiny crabs are running around everywhere, snapping their claws like mad. There’s a lady in a bikini for some reason.

Oh, but the most beautiful image of all is Karkat, double birds out. He’s flipping those motherfuckers off left and right, so fast like he’s got machine gun middle fingers, just going all out Rambo on them. Every cultist gets like five personal fuck yous right in the face, and they all take it like _that’s_ scripture too.

Dave laughs so hard he starts crying. His stoic mask is smashed to bits, but he doesn’t care. Tears are literally streaming down his face, and it’s a bad idea but he really, _really_ wants to kiss this stupid troll and see his unwanted religious following write RPF of them into their holy books.

So that’s what he does, just walks up there and squishes his maybe-boyfriend’s cheeks between his palms and plants a big one on Karkat’s lips mid-yell. The double middle fingers freeze in mid-fuck-you.

When they part, Karkat remains frozen. Dave’s conscience immediately reiterates that HOLY SHIT THAT WAS A BAD IDEA. Seriously not cool, bro. Why’d you do that?? He braces himself to be smacked or yelled at, friendship forever ruined oh shit oh no oh shit--

Karkat slowly turns to Kanaya. “Subtlety totally works.”

Kanaya, in turn, heads for the nearest window. She buries her face into the curtains and screams.

 

* * *

 

Signless has been happy for nearly all the time he’s been on Earth, but now he’s even happier. Psii is back where he belongs – free and in Signless’ arms.

They’ve moved in together, to a nice handicap accessible house. The therapy will take a while, and there’s a chance he’ll never regain full mobility, but just having this second chance is more than they ever thought they’d have.

They have friends from all over the world, human and troll alike. Once in a while, rainbow cloaks will show up on their doorstep seeking to “learn from the master”, but Signless just points them out back and they help weed his garden. If it’s hot out, he’ll offer a glass of Psii’s homemade, fresh squeezed nut milk. Nut milk is all the rage among Earthbound trolls these days. Psii says it’s a milestone in his path to becoming a domestic goddess, and while Signless has no idea what that entails, he’s always up for anything that makes Psii happy.

Crabson’s spawn have gotten big enough that most of them are no longer around. Many humans came around in the hopes of getting a lusus for their larvae. It’s a bit sad to see them go, but at least they were adopted out to good families.

Speaking of humans, they are a universal lusus species. It’s both strange and wonderful to witness. They are able to form caretaking bonds with trolls regardless of hemospectrum, as their species lacks this distinction altogether. But more than that, they’ve been known to adopt any number of species heedless of genetics or appearance or sometimes even sentience. Some of them _talk_ to _vegetation_ and insist that custodial cooing encourages growth. Of _vegetation_. Many larval stage humans begin this caretaking practice before attaining adequate speech or fine motor control, with “toddlers” being conscripted into caring for “babies”, or in the absence of “babies”, substituting with anything from plastic figures to plushies to _rocks with eyes painted on them_.

And yet, among Signless’ most frequented circles, many human friends have confessed to him that their custodians abandoned or shunned them once they took up the sign of the rainbow. It is so strange and heartbreaking.

Signless has come to know great joy in taking care of small creatures. He thinks, perhaps, he could be a substitute lusus for humans in need.

Psii insists on accompanying him to the next parade, and the next, and all the ones thereafter. They always march hand in hand, wearing matching shirts that say, in rainbow letters, “Free Dad Hugs”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have headcanons about troll-lusus brood parasitism and lateral gene transfer being the reasons for the evolution of the hemospectrum and caste-specific abilities. Also, every OC I make either dies terribly or is a derp. This is a happy fic, so they’re all derps.
> 
> Aquala Orsino is a tardigrade troll. In this world, giant Alternian tardigrades are a thing. She used to ride her mom like a bear, but underwater, and very slowly. She’s mostly useless in battle, but can hibernate to survive anything from the standard drought/famine/pollution to severe radiation and the vacuum of space. She was, in fact, punted out of a spaceship once (for being useless), something like a hundred sweeps ago, and was only recently found floating out there in the void and rehydrated by a curious troll/human joint science expedition. Eridan keeps her around because she glubs but is too dumb to plot against him like other seatrolls would.
> 
> Serato Prycep is a fungus troll. Cordyceps. It’s medicinal. It’s also a terrifying mind control parasite. Religion is the opiate of the masses. There, it’s a troll now. I love him, but he dumb too. That’s a good thing, since he probably maybe kinda has latent hypno spore powers that he’ll never awaken because this universe allows him to derp. He has little shroom horns.
> 
> I only wanted dad hugs and ended up with another 7k words of everyone being flailing idiots.


End file.
